Publications

• Books

The Correspondence of Dominicus Baudius (1561-1613), ed. Paul Botley and Floris Verhaart, 3 vols. Geneva, Droz, forthcoming 2025. 1490 pages.

A critical edition of the correspondence of the northern European poet, rhetorician and historian Dominicus Baudius, funded by the Leverhulme Trust. The extant correspondence contains 463 letters, most of which are in Latin, with substantial elements in ancient Greek. A smaller number are in French and Dutch. Many of the letters are published here for the first time; many more which were distorted by the censorship of early editors, or incorrectly mended by later editors, are here restored from surviving manuscripts and other contemporary sources. For further details, see the project website.

The Correspondence of Isaac Casaubon in England, 1610-1614, ed. Paul Botley and Máté Vince, 4 vols. Geneva, Droz, 2018. 2324 pages.

A critical edition of Casaubon’s correspondence from his final years in London, 1610-1614, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, containing 731 letters. Nearly half of the material is published here for the first time. Nicholas Hardy: ‘This outstandingly well‐researched and presented edition of Isaac Casaubon’s correspondence ... illuminates every aspect of late humanist culture. An edition ... at the cutting edge of research into late Renaissance correspondence’ (Renaissance Studies). James Zetzel: 'For their labors on this material, Paul Botley and Máté Vince deserve our profound admiration as well as our thanks. ... This edition displays an astonishing level of both learning and accuracy’ (Bryn Mawr Classical Review). William Stenhouse: ‘an inspiring and imposing edition. ... The editors’ achievements are remarkable ... a fundamental resource for anyone interested in early seventeenth-century religious debates, in the intellectual world of the Stuart court, or in later Renaissance scholarship’ (Renaissance Quarterly). Jan Machielsen: 'it is a minor miracle that in the age of REF submissions and impact case-studies even a partial critical edition of Casaubon’s correspondence is able to appear. The editors deserve a great deal of admiration for this considerable contribution to scholarship' (English Historical Review). For further details, see the project website.

Richard ‘Dutch’ Thomson (c. 1568-1613): The Life and Letters of a Renaissance Scholar. Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2016. 401 pages.

Thomson is best known as a translator of the King James Bible and one of the earliest English Arminians. This book contains a detailed study of Thomson’s activity, works and library, and an edition of the surviving correspondence, seventy-eight letters, most of which are published here for the first time. Judith Rice Henderson: 'Botley's heroic effort to trace Thomson has produced a valuable resource for research on many topics, for this multilingual, well-educated, English-Dutch son of a Protestant merchant was committed to advancing classical learning in an international circle of acquaintances and friends that included some of the best scholars of his day' (Renaissance Quarterly). Dirk van Miert: 'This timeless and elegantly written book is bound to outlive a succession of fashionable paradigms and will remain relevant to scholars of the learned world around 1600 for a very, very long time' (Low Countries Historical Review).

The Correspondence of Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540-1609), ed. Paul Botley and Dirk Van Miert. 8 vols. Geneva, Droz, 2012. 4930 pages.

A collaborative edition which contains nearly 1700 letters in Latin, Greek and French. This edition publishes and analyses large quantities of previously unpublished material relating to one of the most famous scholars of the period. Luc Deitz: ‘This is the rare thing: an edition exemplary in every respect that comes as close to perfection as is humanly possible’ (Renaissance Quarterly). Scott Mandelbrote: ‘An astonishing achievement. … Our descendants will be using the fruit of their labours for as long as books are read and letters regarded’ (Bryn Mawr Classical Review). Kristine Haugen: ‘The herculean labors of the two editors, Paul Botley and Dirk van Miert, could justly become the subject of Pindaric odes’ (History of Universities). Nicolette Mout: ‘A truly magnificent edition that illuminates the tremendously energetic world of learning in early modern times’ (Church History and Religious Culture).

Learning Greek in Western Europe, 1396-1529: Grammars, Dictionaries and Student Texts. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 100. Philadelphia, American Philosophical Society, 2010. 270 pages.

The first monograph-length study of its kind. John Monfasani: ‘Botley has produced a brilliantly exciting work of scholarship that goes a long way in illuminating one of the most important new developments of the Renaissance, the introduction of Greek into the curriculum. This book will undoubtedly become a staple text in the study of Renaissance humanism. ... This book is the product of profound scholarship long in gestation’ (Renaissance Quarterly).

Latin Translation in the Renaissance: The Theory and Practice of Leonardo Bruni, Giannozzo Manetti and Desiderius Erasmus. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004. Reissued in paperback 2009. 217 pages.

Stefano Baldassarri: ‘a remarkable contribution to both Renaissance scholarship and translation studies’ (Bryn Mawr Classical Review). Marc Laureys: ‘a superb contribution to the history of Greek scholarship’ (Antiquité classique). Robert Kendrick: ‘the author has given us a much-needed and careful investigation of three lions in Renaissance translation into Latin; moreover, he has paved the way for subsequent scholarship in this under-studied subject’ (Modern Philology). Victoria Moul: 'an assured guide and overview to a range of texts (and indeed a type of text) that have not received much attention' (Reformation).

• Articles

‘Early Greek-Latin dictionaries and the printing press’, in Incunabula in Greek Libraries: Recording, Documentation, Historical Context, Athens, Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation, 2025, forthcoming.

‘Isaac Casaubon and King James I against Pierre Du Moulin: Conversion and collaboration in three new manuscript sources’, Lias, 50.1, 2024, pp. 1-39.

This article traces Casaubon's confessional struggles in Paris in 1610. It publishes [1] marginalia by Casaubon which were critical of his pastor Pierre Du Moulin, [2] a Latin tract by Casaubon outlining problems with Du Moulin's published work, and [3] a French letter of 1611 from King James to Du Moulin which incorporated Casaubon's arguments.

‘Isaac Casaubon’s Observationes and his lost treatise De Critica.’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 85, 2022, pp. 113-43.

This article uses manuscript evidence to offer an outline of Casaubon’s long-sought treatise De critica, and shows that Johannes Woverius of Hamburg used a manuscript copy of De critica for his own treatise De polymathia (1603).

‘Letters’, in A. Blair, P. Duguid, A. Goeing, and A. Grafton, eds, Information: A Historical Companion. Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2021, pp. 563-66.

‘'Thomson, Richard (c. 1569-1613), scholar and theologian', in Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, 43 vols to date, Herzberg and Nordhausen, Verlag Traugott Bautz, 1975-2021. Published online in English, and forthcoming in print in German.

‘Early Arabic Studies in Western Europe: Letters from Marcus Welser to Marquard Freher, 1611-1612, on Arabic Epigraphy.’ Lias 45, 2, 2018, pp. 223-39.

‘Literature in Exile: The Books of Andronicus Callistus, 1475-1476.' Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 72, 2018, pp. 181-96.
A study of the fortunes of Callistus’ important library, and of the first Greek manuscript of Herodotus to reach England.

'The Correspondence of Richard Thomson', published online in 2017: http://emlo-portal.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/collections/?catalogue=richard-thomson

‘Three Very Different Translators: Joseph Scaliger, Isaac Casaubon and Richard Thomson’. Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, 41, issue 4, 2014, pp. 477-91.

‘An Unpublished Greek Letter of Julius Caesar Scaliger to Gérard-Marie Imbert’. Lias, 40, 2013, pp. 1-11.

‘Greek Epistolography in Fifteenth Century Italy’, in Greek into Latin: From Antiquity until the Nineteenth Century, eds. John Glucker and Charles Burnett, London, Warburg Institute Studies and Texts, 2012, pp. 187-205.

‘Fifteenth-Century Translators on their Art: Leonardo Bruni and Giannozzo Manetti’, in Übersetzung und Transformation, eds. H. Böhme, C. Rapp and W. Rösler, Berlin and New York, De Gruyter, 2007, pp. 61-78.

‘The Letters of Joseph Scaliger (1540-1609).’ Intellectual History Review, 17, 2007, pp. 67-68.

‘Renaissance Scholarship and the Athenian Calendar.’ Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, 46, 2006, pp. 395-431.

A survey of the issue from Antiquity until the sixteenth century. Its conclusions place references to Greek dates in the period on a new foundation.

‘Six articles appeared in the New Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004:

1. John Bury (1535-1571), translator of Isocrates.
2. George Colvile (fl. 1556), translator of Boethius.
3. Thomas Richards (d. 1564), printer and editor of Boethius.
4. Christopher Watson (c. 1545-1581), historian and translator of Polybius.
5. Thomas Forrest (fl. 1580), translator of Isocrates.
6. (with N. G. Wilson), John Harmer (1555-1613), professor of Greek, editor of Chrysostom, and one of the translators of the King James Bible.

‘Giannozzo Manetti, Alfonso of Aragon and Pompey the Great: A Crusading Document of 1455.’

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 67, 2004, pp. 129-56.
The first edition of a substantial Latin oration. The accompanying essay examines the fortunes of the figure of Pompey the Great in the literature of the period.

‘Two articles appeared in The Reader’s Guide to British History, ed. David Loades, London and New York, Fitzroy-Dearborn, 2003:

1. ‘John Whitgift, 1532-1604, Archbishop of Canterbury.’
2. ‘Richard Hooker, 1554-1600, Apologist for the Elizabethan Church.’

‘Learning Greek in Western Europe, 1476-1516’, in Literacy, Education and Manuscript Transmission in Byzantium and Beyond, eds. Catherine Holmes and Judith Waring, Leiden, Brill, 2002, pp. 199-223.

• In preparation

The Correspondence of Isaac Casaubon in Geneva, 1583-1596, 2 vols.

Now that publication of Casaubon’s letters in England, 1610-1614, is complete, I am preparing an edition of his earliest letters, belonging to his time in Geneva. The edition contains 284 letters in Latin, French, and Greek, nearly one third of which have not been published before.

Johannes Woverius (1574-1612) and the Idea of the Scholar. 3 vols.
Many of the letters of the German scholar Johannes Woverius of Hamburg were published in an abbreviated and censored form in 1618 (235 letters). I have acquired new manuscript material, including copies of 133 unpublished letters, uncensored copies of 68 of the published letters, and several other manuscripts in Woverius’ hand. This material enables a substantially new edition of the correspondence, and an entirely new study of Woverius, one which shows how ‘learned correspondences’ and the idea of the scholar were constructed by early modern editors.

• Reviews

Christine Bénévent, Luigi-Alberto Sanchi, Romain Menini, ed. Les Noces de Philologie et de Guillaume Budé: Un humaniste et son œuvre à la Renaissance, Paris, 2021. Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance 84, 2022, pp. 420-22.

Stuart Gillespie, ed. Newly Recovered English Classical Translations, 1600-1800, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 25, 2018.

Jeroen de Keyser, ed. Francesco Filelfo: Collected Letters. Epistolarum Libri XLVIII, 4 vols, Alessandria, 2015. Renaissance Quarterly, 70, no. 4, Winter 2017, pp. 1469-72.

Federica Ciccolella, Donati Graeci: Learning Greek in the Renaissance, Leiden and Boston, 2008. Renaissance Quarterly, 62, no. 3, 2009, pp. 860-61.

Athanasii Alexandrini Opuscula Omnibono Leoniceno Interprete, ed. S. Fiaschi, Edizione nazionale delle traduzioni dei testi greci in età umanistica e rinascimentale, Florence, 2006. Classical Review, 59, no. 2, 2009, pp. 630-31.

Joannis Deligiannis, Fifteenth-Century Latin Translations of Lucian’s Essay on Slander, Pisa and Rome, 2006. International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 2009, pp. 860-61.